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Gameplay Premises Part 1 – Spells

Of course a game is always moving and changing, some more than others, and for sure there will be adjustments, but it is important to start with a vision, a guiding light to follow during the development. For WD the main concept is the one of spirits and effects and their combinations.

In the world of WD wizards are individuals that know how to forge pacts with spirits or bind them at their command. In particular, each time a wizard bonds with a spirit she will be able to borrow its power to manifest a specific effect in the form of a spell.

Your character will not actually gain levels but will instead bond with more spirits and thus unlock more powerful effects that will gradually open up more strategical options. An example that I have already used is to cast Ice on the floor and then use Wind to push an enemy over a cliff.

That in itself should give enough variance to keep a player interested: the idea is to have a very simple mechanic that enables diverse and emergent gameplay choices. But that is not all. A second step in mastering spells is to combine different effects!

For example by using Ice and Wind at the same time your character will be able to cast the powerful Blizzard spell.

Combined spells are usually stronger but will reduce your tactical options for a time. Spells will in fact have a cooldown timer (CD), which represents the number of rounds that it takes to recover a certain effect. Combined spells will “lock” down more than one effect and usually for a longer time (as depicted in the figure), adding another level of tactical depth.

This is the basic concept but of course we have a couple more ideas to keep WD from becoming repetitive and opening up the tactical and strategical options of the player.

What are your thoughts on this mechanic? Knowing only this bit do you think that it could be enough to keep a player engaged?

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Wizards of Unica - ALPHA 0.2
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Low-Res Tactic. High Fantasy.
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Wizards of Unica is completely independently developed, by two nice guys who joined together to make their dream of making games come true. Wizards of Unica will be free-to-play: if you like our work, help us to create a bigger, better, harder game!